by Ralph Cotton
“If it’ll help Billy here,” said Ronald Andrews, “I’ll ride out and take a look around at Renfro’s place.”
“We both will,” said Carl Yates. He turned to Sam. “And don’t worry, Ranger, we’ll give everybody a fair shuffle.” He passed a look of disdain to Colonel Fuller, then returned his gaze to the Ranger.
“Much obliged, blacksmith,” said Sam. “It’s time somebody in this town came forward to help one of their own.” He stared at Fuller, then back at Collins. “Billy and I will be at the jail if anybody wants us.”
“Carl and me will escort you there before we leave,” said Ronald Andrews, the shotgun still over the crook of his arm. “Just to make sure everything’s jake.”
“Thanks,” Sam nodded. He reached around and took Billy Odle by his cuffed wrists and said, “Come on, Billy, don’t be afraid; I’m right beside you.” From the swollen gray sky, fresh snow began to fall.
Making their way through the parted crowd toward the jail, Billy Odle stuck close to the Ranger’s side, feeling pressed by the looks of hatred and anger on the hard faces surrounding them. On the boardwalk outside the jail, Billy asked in a lowered voice, “What about my ma, Ranger? Is she really doing all right?”
“She’s at the hotel, Billy,” said Sam, swinging the door open and stepping inside the plank and stone jailhouse. “The women from the saloon are taking turns looking after her.” He looked all around for Kirby Bell, but Bell wasn’t there.
Inside the jail, Billy turned and faced the Ranger, Ronald Andrews and Carl Yates. “Can I see her?” Billy asked.
“Not yet, Billy,” replied Sam. “We’ve got to let this town settle down some. It might not look it, but the least little thing right now could send these men into a hanging frenzy.” He looked past Billy Odle and saw Bootlip Thomas through the bars of one of the cells along the wall. “Nobody wants that to happen, do they, Bootlip?”
Bootlip stood clinging to the bars, blood-stained bandages wrapped around him from the waist up. His voice wheezed as he said, “Nobody I can think of.”
“Where’s Bell?” Sam asked Bootlip.
“He went to bring back some grub,” said Bootlip. “Now that I’m mending I could eat a quarter of beef just while I’m waiting on supper. Are you the same way after getting shot, Ranger?”
Sam didn’t respond to Bootlip. Instead he nudged Billy Odle toward an empty cell. “For the time being we’re going to have to keep you in here, Billy.”
“Huh-uh!” Billy hesitated, getting excited, planting his feet firmly on the floor. “I want to see my ma and make sure she’s all right!”
Sam knew that what he heard was just Billy’s way of calling out for his mama the way any scared child might do. “Sorry, Billy, not right now.” He gave an extra nudge, sending Billy though the open cell door before the boy had a chance to get any more frightened by the looming iron bars or the black slices of darkness lurking in the corners of the cell. Sam closed the iron door and locked it. Billy stood with the terrified look of a trapped animal.
“Step over here, Billy,” said Sam. “Let me take the cuffs off.”
With his head bowed, Billy held his wrists forward to the bars, allowing Sam to reach through and remove the cuffs.
“Don’t worry, Billy,” Ronald Andrews offered, seeing the look on the boy’s face. “I’ll go look in on your ma, tell her you’re here and—”
“You stay away from her!” Billy warned, throwing himself forward, grasping the iron bars with both hands. “You’ve looked in on my ma for the last time!”
“That ain’t the way I mean, Billy.” Ronald Andrews’s face reddened in embarrassment.
“Easy, Billy,” said Carl. “Ronald just wants to help.”
Sam watched in silence.
“He wants to help?” Billy shouted through the bars. “I’ve seen how Ronald wants to help my ma!”
“Billy, I’m sorry,” said Ronald Andrews, sounding ashamed. But Billy Odle didn’t seem to hear him.
“Did you think I was blind, or stupid?” Billy raged. “Or did you think it was all just fine with me . . . seeing all you drunken bastards come and go in the night? Did you think it was all forgotten the next day? That the few dollars you left behind made up for everything?” As he shouted and sobbed, he began banging his forehead on the bars until the Ranger stepped forward, reached through the bars and stopped him.
“Billy! Stop it!” ordered Sam. “What’s done is done. Get a grip on yourself.” He turned to Ronald Andrews and Carl Yates. “Maybe it’s best you two get going. I’ll take care of everything here.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” said Ronald Andrews, avoiding the Ranger’s eyes.
“Don’t worry, though, Ranger,” said Carl, “anything we learn out there, we’ll bring to you first . . . make sure you decide how to tell the town about it.”
“Much obliged,” said Sam. He watched them turn and walk through the door. As soon as they closed the door behind themselves, he said to Billy Odle, “Settle yourself down, young man. I don’t know what’s gone on here in the past, but those men are doing the best they can to help you out.”
“I don’t want their help,” Billy said, his red-rimmed eyes still welling with tears. “They’re not friends of mine or my ma or pa. All they wanted was what they could get, once my pa was hauled off to jail.”
Sam didn’t know what to say. He stood and listened and let the boy get it off his chest.
“Willie John is the only friend I’ve got. He’s the only one who ever helped me and ma without wanting something in return. That’s why I helped him . . . that’s why I’d do it all again if I had the chance.” As he spoke, he reached into the pockets of his outgrown trousers, took out the twenty-dollar gold piece Willie John had given him and held it up for the Ranger to see. “There, see that? That’s twenty dollars Willie John gave me, said give ten of it to my ma and tell her ‘no strings attached.” ’ He jutted his chin as he flipped the coin, snatched it out of the air and pocketed it.
Sam shook his head slowly. “Billy, I don’t know why folks mistreat one another the way they do sometime. I see what happened to you and your ma, and I wish to God things had gone different for you. But no matter what brought you to where you are, you’re here now and things have to be made right. You’re wrong about Willie John being the only friend you’ve got. There’s people in this town who care about you and your ma.”
“Then they’ve had a strange way of showing it,” Billy said, his voice lowered to a murmur as he plopped down on the wooden cot on the back wall of the cell and rubbed his freed wrists. Sam turned away and walked to the front window where he stood looking out at the group of men as they slowly broke away from one another and walked off in different directions through the falling snow.
“I find that most people want to do the right thing, Billy,” Sam said over his shoulder. “Sometimes it just takes a little prodding to get them started in the right direction.”
“Not here,” Billy Odle said. “This town is full of nothing but rotten no-good sonsabitches. I wish the Ganston Gang had shot it to the ground.”
Bootlip Thomas let out a low wheezing laugh, then coughed against the back of his hand and said, “Boy, this town is no different from the next. They’re all the same when you’re looking up at them from the bottom. I found that out when I was no more than a pup like you. That’s what made it easy for me to do the things I done.”
“Quiet down, Bootlip,” Sam said without turning from the window. “This young man already has a bad enough attitude. We don’t need you making it worse.”
“This here’s the one what cut out with Willie John, eh?” said Bootlip, trying to look sidelong through his bars over at Billy.
“Yep, he’s the one,” said Sam. “Tells me him and Willie John are good friends.”
“Good friends with that wild Indian outlaw?” Bootlip shook his head. “I’ve known Willie John longer than I wanted to. If he’s ever befriended anybody, I never saw it.”
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bsp; “Maybe you don’t know everything,” Billy shot back, as he rushed up to the bars.
When Bootlip Thomas fell silent, Sam turned from the window and looked at Billy Odle. “Easy, kid. Bootlip here might not be the best example for a young man to follow, but when it comes to knowing outlaws he could write the book on it.”
Billy stepped back from the bars and slumped once again on the edge of the cot. “I didn’t mean anything by it, Mr. Bootlip,” he said. “We’re both in the same fix here. I guess we ought to stick together.”
“Stick together? Ha!” Bootlip Thomas and Sam Burrack passed one another a glance, then Bootlip said, “Son, we ain’t in the same fix here at all . . . I figure I’m good for a hanging, soon as I get well enough to die and Fuller can talk the townsmen into lending him a rope.” He grinned. “But you’re just a boy. All you got to do is act sorry, tell them whatever you can make up about the Injun, and you’re back out there busting windows with a slingshot before suppertime.”
“I ain’t telling nothing about Willie John,” said Billy.
“Then you’re plumb loco,” Bootlip wheezed. “Part of knowing this business is knowing when and who to trade off for yourself, if you’re lucky enough to get the chance. If Willie John was around when those horses were stolen, I can tell you, straight up, that old man is dead. Willie never liked to leave somebody fanning his trail.”
Sam looked back and forth between the two cells. Noticing that Billy Odle seemed to be paying attention to Bootlip Thomas, Sam offered in a quiet tone, “I’m not asking him anything about the Indian, Bootlip. Besides, he might not be so lucky, not if Fuller and a couple of the town leaders get their way.”
“What?” Bootlip Thomas gave the Ranger a surprised look. “You don’t think they’d try hang him do you . . . him being just a lad and all?”
“Who knows what they’ll try?” said Sam. “The whole town’s been milling like cattle before a storm. If anybody ever steps forward and takes control, there’s no telling where he could lead them.”
“I know,” said Bootlip. “I’ve seen it a hundred times. Let the weather set in hard, least little thing, a town turns into a powder keg—all it needs now is something to light the fuse.”
“I know,” said Sam, running faces through his mind—Meigs, Colonel Fuller, Asa Dahl, Selectman Collins. He considered each man in turn.
“You best hope it ain’t that Colonel Fuller that takes charge,” Bootlip said, as if sharing the Ranger’s inner thoughts. He jerked his head sidelong toward Billy’s cell. “Fuller would just as soon hang a young boy as look at him. It wouldn’t be the first time, either.”
Sam saw the look of fear sweep over Billy Odle’s face at the sound of Bootlip’s words. “Don’t worry, I won’t allow it, Billy,” Sam said. “I give you my word on it.” He looked back out through the window at the falling snow, and saw Kirby Bell come toward the jail with a covered basket of food. “Looks like this snow is going to get worse before it gets better,” he said to the quickly frosting windowpane.
PART 3
Chapter 15
Throughout his first day traveling, the snow had fallen thick and steadily. Before slaughtering the mule, Willie John had waited until he was two miles up the switchback trails into the shelter of the hills. Tethering his horse, he led the hapless mule a few yards off the swollen snow-covered trail into a narrow crevice. He’d killed the mule slowly by bleeding it out, as much to keep it quiet as to create for himself as little activity as possible. Had the mule felt the sharp pain of death and struggled against it, Willie knew he could not have held it still. So, he’d taken his knife and slit a long artery high up in the mule’s shoulder and watched its blood spill into a hoof-deep puddle of red slush. As the mule sank to its knees, Willie sat back and drank two tin cups of its steaming blood, to both warm and sustain himself. When the animal had rolled over onto its side and its breathing slowed to a halt, Willie John moved in with his knife and began his task.
Willie knew he needed to find a place to rest in order to regain his strength. But rest was still a long time coming. In his fevered condition and still weak from his wounds, it took him longer than it should have to butcher the mule. But by nightfall he had cleaved off nearly fifty pounds of red flesh and cold-packed it by covering it in a thin layer of snow and wrapping it in a ragged blanket. It was past midnight when the snow stopped. He found shelter beneath the skeletal remains of some tangled cedars whose roots had loosened their grip on the shallow soil and had toppled over in such a manner as to form a natural lean-to across the narrow trail. Beneath this snow-laden canopy, Willie made a cold camp for himself and ate the raw mule meat. He slept wrapped in his coat and a thin blanket; at the first trace of silver sunlight beneath the dome of the earth, he stood up shivering beyond his control, mounted his horse, and rode on.
The second day he spent in the saddle, stopping only long enough to relieve himself and check on his wounds. By late afternoon Willie John rode slumped forward in his saddle, being led by the horse. Only when the horse came to a halt and had stood still for a few minutes did Willie John stir from his half-conscious stupor and look around in the gray shadows of evening. The trail he was on had ended at a boarded-up mine shaft.
Willie stepped down from his saddle, kicked away snow and empty tins and whiskey bottles until he could get both hands around the edges of brittle pine boards and yank them free. When he’d ripped an opening large enough for him and the horse, he turned gasping for breath, feeling a trickle of fresh blood begin to seep down his side. “We’re . . . home,” he rasped wryly, in the direction of the tired animal. Within minutes he’d cleared a circle on the dirt floor inside the mine entrance and tied the horse to a timber. He gathered broken boards and kindling and soon had a fire licking upward. He slept the sleep of the dead.
Most of the next day he spent lying huddled close to the fire inside the timber-framed entrance to the mine shaft, the only place large enough for both himself and the horse. What little time he was awake he spent attending to his wounds and eating roasted mule meat from the end of his knife blade. In the afternoon Willie led the horse outside to a nearby hitching post, then dragged more wood back into the mine. He boiled water in a discarded metal bucket he found and bathed himself. He fed the fire until waves of heat shimmered off of the rock walls around him. Then he sat sweating with a blanket wrapped around himself for over an hour until the heat became unbearable an his own sweat felt scorching hot against his flesh.
By nightfall, Willie John could feel himself growing stronger. With his strength returning, his mind cleared. He thought about Hubbler Wells and realized that he had to go back there. He thought about Billy Odle and shook his head. He told himself that Billy Odle had nothing to do with his reason for going back . . . or did he? Cut it out! He chastised himself for even thinking that way. This was business, nothing more. With the fire lowered and a hot cup of mule broth in his hands, Willie sat near the fire with his head bowed. That dumb kid . . .
He relaxed and drifted in the silence and the crackling fire. Then, like a creature of the wilds whose seclusion was about to be encroached upon, he lifted his dark eyes and directed his senses toward the cold white world beyond the mine’s entrance. A presence was out there now, someone moving ever closer along the trail. There was no sound, but there didn’t need to be. In place of sound there was premonition. A presence loomed somewhere just beyond the outer circle of sound, and when it finally moved into hearing range, the faint neighing of a horse came as no surprise, but rather as an affirmation.
In his mind’s eye, Willie saw tired horses struggle upward through the thick, heavy snow, just off the trail on a dangerous rocky slope. They were lost, whoever they were, Willie John thought. He stood up and walked to the front of the mine entrance, and stared through the moonlight along the trail until a faint waft of steam from a blowing nostril billowed up and drifted on the air. Then he slipped out silently and circled wide of the trail and down the sloping hillside.
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p; At the upper edge of the trail, forty feet from the mine entrance, Texas Bob Mackay pulled his horse forward by its reins, then turned and said down to the others in a lowered voice, “Come on, boys, it ain’t that much farther.”
He stood waiting, catching his breath until the other three topped the edge on foot, leading their tired horses. “Lord have mercy! That was a hell of a climb,” said Morgan Aglo, the first man to step beside Texas Bob. “I thought you said you knew this country. If I’d figured you’d get us lost, I’d never let you throw in with us.”
“Keep your voice down, Morgan,” Texas Bob said. “You were lost when I ran into you.” He nodded toward the glow of firelight flickering beyond the mine entrance. “There’s a warm fire just ahead. If it’s not Willie John’s, we might just have to kill somebody to get to it.”
Morgan looked toward the licking flames coming from the mine-shaft entrance. He took Bob’s warning and replied in a gruff whisper, “Hell, whatever it takes.” As he spoke he drew a pistol from his waist. Two more men led their horses up over the edge of the trail. They looked at the pistol in Morgan Aglo’s hand, then at one another. The thinner of the two, Joe Shine, said to Aglo in a loud panting voice, “If you’re holding that pistol on me I wish to hell you’d go ahead and shoot . . . I’m too tried and cold to care.”
“Shine, shut up, damn it!” Morgan Aglo hissed. “You’re louder than an army bugle!”
“Why all the whispering?” asked Joe Shine, his blaring voice unchanged.
“Jesus . . .” Texas Bob shook his head in disgust and pulled his horse away from the others.
“You’ll know why when you go grabbing at a bullet in your belly,” Morgan Aglo said to Joe Shine. “Texas Bob says that might be Willie John’s fire . . . that Injun’s liable to commence shooting, not knowing it’s us.”